crag of ment is seen to the best advantage from the extensive Table Rock, hanging over the river at a height almost as great as the precipice itself you are gazing upon from its summit; and after satiating your mind with contemplating this surpassing sight, dress yourself for the third time in oil-skin apparel, to avoid saturating your body, and go down the shaft beneath the said Table Rock, whence, by the assistance of a guide, you will speedily find yourself behind the whole expanse of this gigantic element, bounding and flashing down into a gulf of more than 850 feet in depth.* Get away from it as soon as you can, and thank your God that you have got away; and while your sable conductor is peeling off your drenched garments, imbibe any quantity of brandy you can lay your hands upon. The final view to take of this development of horrible beauty should be from a suspension-bridge thrown over the river, at a distance of about two miles from the scene you will have just left; and, returning home, you will at once be convinced that you are fit for nothing, but to remember, as far as may be possible, the magnificence, the sublimity, the terror, and the fearful truth of the scene that has been laid out before you. It is in such immutable displays as these that the true worship of the Creator becomes manifest, where, as it has been beautifully expressed, a thought of the centuries through which "the voice of God, as the sound of many waters," here has thundered its eternal peal, leaves mere man his only task-to wonder and adore. The anecdotiana connected with the place, some arising out of calculation, others from hearsay, some from fiction, some from fact, are points upon which every visitor must draw his own conclusions. If you are told that seven hundred thousand tons of water are carried over the Niagara precipice every minute, and, finding that amounts to forty-two million tons an hour, you begin to doubt, always remember that you are not bound to believe it. If you overhear a person say that the Falls can be heard thirty miles off, or sometimes as far as Toronto, which is more than forty miles off, you are at liberty to question his veracity, unless you happen to recollect the circumstance of the sentinel at Windsor, who was accused of being asleep on his post at twelve o'clock at night, and who was acquitted, because he swore to his having heard the clock of St. Paul's, London, (twenty-one miles off!) strike thirteen instead of twelve, which turned out to be the fact! For our own part, we can only say that, whether the wind had set in in a wrong direction, or whether the railway *Some say, unfathomable! carriages made the greater noise of the two-points we cannot decide-but we caught nothing of the thunder said to outvie the cannon's roar, until we got within half a mile of its rolling. That ships have been sent down, and, like the luckless "Caroline," have been heard no more of; that birds have drooped upon the wing when approaching too near the verge of the torrent, just as if they had been shot; that fish of all kinds attempting, like Sappho, to take the fatal leap, have been confounded with the elements to which they belong, are matters, we think we may say, beyond dispute; and also that other lovers, besides the poetess, we have alluded to, have here, after that lady's example in Leucadia, put a suicidal termination to their blighted affections, may be credited; but the safest way in all such cases is to hear a great deal, and believe a small quantity of it. Buffalo, the starting-point from which you reach Niagara, is another of those American cities which were forests, and are streets. When we say there is one here two miles long, it is only necessary to add that it does not contain houses enough to front one-fourth part of such distance, and that the interstices are dotted with a church or two, a stray livery stable, a huge hole where an hotel is to be built, and a pile of ruins where one has just been pulled down. Buffalo is, notwithstanding, a very important place, because, heading as it were, Lake Erie, it may be looked upon as the high road between the west and the easta turnpike at which an immense quantity of toll is annually taken. You have direct communication from this city with all parts of the Union; with New York direct, a distance of nearly five hundred miles, in the short space of fifteen hours, by what they term "lightning expresses"-to the focus of New England, turning off at Albany, a greater distance, in very little more time; while, to the westward, it has a lake navigation exceeding 1450 miles-to say nothing of its interminable communications with innumerable places, by virtue of the Erie canal, to which wondrous construction it mainly owes its great prosperity. Buffalo can boast of a Young Man's Literary Association, equal to any of its size in all America, and amongst its citizens are some gentlemen of considerable scholastic eminence; while in its several journals may be found writers as distinguished as any attached to the periodical press of the country; and a great feature in the institution of which we have just made mention, is one of the very best lecture-rooms we were ever in, where may be heard in the winter months, at respective periods, the brilliant essays of Whipple, the sparkling flashes of Starr King, the learned solemnities of Emerson, and the generalities of other sons of genius and learning. This association, in its well-assorted library, its organization, and in the main principles upon which it is conducted, has all the solidity, with much less of the pretension, we have found in other establishments assuming to hold a higher character. Buffalo, being the gathering point for visitors to the Niagara Falls, may be considered more of a fashionable watering-place than any other commercial city of America can aspire to be; and as getting to it presents a choice of difficulties, the traveller must make his own selection. In using this term, we allude to those trifling obstructions which voyaging anywhere must necessarily encounter, of course more in this go-ahead country than in any other, and the chances, therefore, lie between a burst out on the lake and a pitch out on the road-one of which, a steam-boat speed of twenty-miles an hour, the other, a railway pace of lightning" of sixty-five miles an hour, are not altogether unlikely to bring about. The "odds" against a safe arrival at Niagara Falls, via Buffalo, have been thus calculated : : "If you travel by land, 'ere you fix your abode there, CHAPTER XIV. A word or two about Ireland, and its utility in America-Three things to avoid in life-Difference between emigration and procreation-The shortest way of becoming an American citizen-The virtue of an oath-A real land of liberty-A country fighting against itself—The different charges for one man thrashing another-Thomas Francis Meagher-His own account of his return from transportation-The exact value of patriotism-The star-spangled banner-Draft to be swallowed every other hour in America-Ingredients for making a rebel-A highlygifted champion, It would be a difficult thing to say anything new about Ireland, on this side of the Atlantic. From the memorable day when, according to the old saw, "By the ford of Brig and Bunn Ireland was lost and won," until the present hour of locomotive celerity, when A journey to Ireland now through the Tubular Is as short as a trip to the old Norwood New Beulah, there has been little change, unless it be for the worse. We may apply to this lovely land the exquisite apostrophe addressed to that of the East, a spot "where all but the spirit of man is divine;" and there is no mistake about it. We have no intention of following up Thomas Moore's native and natural illustration that it is the "First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea," yet we are willing to admit that it is one of them; but why it should be called the Emerald Isle, unless it be from the greenness of so many of its inhabitants, it would be difficult to determine; for there are other islands quite as verdant, and some even more So. All this, however, is a matter of opinion, not worth while stopping to talk about. It is an enchanting part of creation for the eye to gaze upon, but not equally so for the body to dwell in. The outcry of Ireland is, the misrule of England a natural sequitur, that they who could not and cannot govern themselves, invariably object to the domination of others. The mystery, if there be any in the matter, is easily solved; they are priest-ridden to the highest degree, and credulous to the last degree; and then, being gifted with faith to a much greater extent than with common sense, they easily become victims of a false belief. That extensive portion of the community coming under the denomination of the lower classes, have been humbugged with an impression that they are "the finest pisantry" under the sun; and having had the cry of freedom thrust into their ears by the sophistry of oration, and the blandishment of poetry, from all their gifted speakers and writers, they hold industry at an alarming discount; and though they certainly can dig, they infinitely prefer to beg. Their defunct mouth-piece lost sight of that rhapsody of Brutus, or at all events paid no attention to it : "By heaven! I had rather coin my heart, And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring and thus, between the priest and the orator, being "eased" of what little an ordinarily slothful nature may have amassed, they ruin their country by remaining in it, and endeavor to ruin it still more by running away from it. Their importunity may awaken, as it incessantly does, the best sympathies of the sister country, but their ingratitude blunts the very feelings which unceasing solicitation excites. That Ireland has possessed, and still possesses, some of the most gifted men under the sun, admits of no dispute; but their patriotism has ever been a huge mistake; it has never proceeded from a love of country, but from love of self; and the pursuit of a different line of conduct in all their silly movements-miscalled popular-would have solidly benefited the empire they have so often aided to dismember. From their first to their latest attempt at emancipation from that rule their forefathers originally solicited, all their movements have had individual aggrandizement in view; the most recent instance of which we shall by and by refer to. If advice could be of any avail to the misguided people whom the doctrines of such advocates go so far to direct, we should impress this axiom on their memories: "Take heed of an ox before, an ass behind, and A MONK on all sides." The attempt of the Irish to ruin their country by running away from it, is becoming every day more and more demonstrated, the tide of emigration flowing on with resistless force, and its current setting in principally towards America. Alarming as the state of the last census of Ireland appeared to be, we shrewdly suspect the condition of the next one will tell a more lamentable table. The population of that large portion of Great Britain is month after month perceptibly thinned-a fact in itself bad enough; but when it is recollected that this draft of people goes to swell the numbered (not yet number-less) inhabitants of another empire, the case becomes infinitely worse. The reader is unusually astounded when he is frequently told, that the population of such or such a place in the United States has doubled itself in the incredibly brief space of ten years, and he begins to think what a procreative set of people the children of Jonathan must be; but he forgets all the while that immigration, and not procreation, is the grand contributor to this extraordinary exuberance. The extent of this immigration, and the consequences arising, and that may arise, out of it, can only be adequately adjudged by a residence in the immediate scene of action. In an earnest desire to populate their comparatively uninhabited country, the Government of the United States offers unusual advantages to those who feel any wish to visit their shores; and the ties of fatherland are very speedily snapped asunder by the temptations held out by adoption. The prospect of bettering their condition elsewhere, without honestly attempting to better it at home, is the first impulse which leads to action; the second, and perhaps the most powerful, is the idea of following in the paths of freedom, and flying away from British rule, without the remotest idea of what other rule they may happen to come under. The streets of America, the houses, hotels, and stores of America— |